Routinely in the oil and gas industry, colloquially known as the oil patch, two connecting standard-size flanges of land high-pressure piping need to be connected. A common prior art method currently in use today is to measure the difference between two ends of pipe which must be in sealed communication, and cut a proper length of pipe to fit there between. Thereafter, the workmen would position the pipe into its ultimate destination, and fit proper flanges and tack weld these connecting flanges to the center piece of pipe. Once it is measured, the pipe is put on a bench and welded together by hand. Thereafter, it is usually common practice to send this welded unit to an oven for stress relief to relieve any internal stresses which form during the welding process. Further, it is common practice to bathe this unit in an acid bath to remove slag and other types of debris which may form thereon, in particular from the weld. At any rate, there is a fair amount of construction and processing and fabrication required which of course takes time and a certain amount of skill in the art. Finally, the unit must be pressure tested before actually placing this prior art connecting member to the final pipe. Of course, this means fitting it up to a proper pressure testing rig which applies pressure thereto to ensure that the newly fabricated unit can withstand the requisite pressures pursuant to the industry standard. After this process listed in detail above, if the unit is not fit for whatever reason it must be re-fabricated and all of the above-mentioned steps must be re-executed.
Of course, this process is very expensive and utilizes many man-hours and further requires a large amount of downtime before completion of connecting to piping members. It should be further noted that the operating environment for connecting pipes can often be in some remote location. Many of the above-mentioned steps require some form of a shop which again can be expensive for having such services in remote locations.